Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

Burning out and fading away: the exhausting job of marketing new music

Keith Jopling

31 May 2022

The recent protests by music artists about the pressures of keeping up a constant presence on social media are disconcerting in an age when many artists are struggling with mental health issues and wellbeing....

min read

Music creator survey, Q4 2021
Redefining success

Cover image for Music creator survey, Q4 2021

Tatiana Cirisano

May 2022

Creators

Spotify

artist income

As the barriers to music creation continue to lower, more creators enter the field, yet it is becoming harder than ever to earn a living through music, with a finite amount of revenue being split ever...

Is TikTok becoming a record label? The question misses the point

Tatiana Cirisano

18 May 2022

Music streaming

music industry

Fandom

Every time TikTok does anything that seems to hedge on record label territory, someone inevitably asks the question: is TikTok turning into a record label? Cue the eye-rolls from the music industry. No...

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Why increased competition and the cost-of-living crisis add up to a new Netflix

Tim Mulligan

17 May 2022

Online video

Video

Audience Insight

15 years into Netflix’s subscription video on demand (SVOD) pivot and the entertainment disruptor is poised to pivot again. According to press reports, Netflix is considering re-inventing itself as an...

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Xbox Cloud Gaming expansion heralds a cross-platform future

Perry Gresham

13 May 2022

xbox

cloud gaming

Fortnite

MIDiA has been writing about Xbox’s cross-platform future for years, and Microsoft is bringing this closer to reality with each step they take. Ultimately, Xbox gamers may soon not need to own consoles...

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How the iPod changed everything

Mark Mulligan

10 May 2022

ipod

iPhone

ipad

Apple just announced that it is finally ending production of the iPod . At 21 years of age, it outlived many of the dramatic changes it witnessed and triggered. In this age, dominated by streaming (and...

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What Snapchat is getting right about the future (and why music should pay attention)

Tatiana Cirisano

6 May 2022

music industry

Social media

Snapchat

The music industry has spent the last few years studying the ins and outs of new platforms like TikTok and Twitch, with good reason. But the decade-old Snapchat increasingly appears to be social media’s...

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Quick take: Spotify to connect artists and fans on a Roblox island

Karol Severin

5 May 2022

Roblox

Spotify

Games

Spotify launched a digital island in Roblox yesterday. The destination enables players to take part in interactive quests, buy virtual merchandise, mingle with artists, and create their own sounds and...

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The ‘Women In Music 2022’ report is about more than just music

Hanna Kahlert

5 May 2022

Media and Marketing

Product Strategy

MIDiA, in conjunction with TuneCore and Believe, has just published its second annual “BE THE CHANGE – Women In Music” report, available for free download here . We have discussed some key findings...

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Unreal is evolving from a games development tool to a story-telling tool

Karol Severin

7 Apr 2022

Epic Games

Unreal Engine 5

games development

Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, launched Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) this week. Despite being in works for a few years and in private Beta for most of 2021, the overall product strategy focusses on tapping...

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Why entertainment could reach new levels of fragmentation in 2022

Hanna Kahlert

6 Apr 2022

d2c

Media

Social

Since the direct-to-consumer (D2C) ‘big bang moment’ of video in 2019, entertainment propositions have been multiplying rapidly across all entertainment genres. This is about to become critical as...

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The future of music consumption is (re)creation

Kriss Thakrar

4 Apr 2022

Creator economy

social music

Creator tools

The music industry has grown at a record rate , led by streaming and boosted by an influx of an increasingly relevant revenue source: non-DSP streaming (via platforms such as TikTok and Twitch). This growth...

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Microsoft’s new cloud focus solidifies Xbox Game Pass as the Netflix of games

Perry Gresham

29 Mar 2022

cloud gaming

Xbox Game Pass

Netflix

Last week Microsoft announced a new division of Xbox Game Studios, the “Cloud Gaming Organisation”, designed to help developers create new cloud-native games to be distributed via their Xbox Game Pass...

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The live audio craze sparked in lockdown – but will it be part of our new normal?

Annie Langston

17 Mar 2022

live audio

Amazon

audio creator

During the pandemic, live audio (arguably a new generation of radio) became a much-needed distraction and comfort to many people in lockdown. Clubhouse, which originally began with invite-only exclusivity,...

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Why TikTok is primed to become the next-generation music company

Tatiana Cirisano

10 Mar 2022

TikTok

Social media

Creators

By now, TikTok’s impact on popular music is well-established. The platform routinely catapults songs to hit status, and it has become a regular part of digital marketing campaigns. But behind the scenes,...

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Spotify’s Car Thing has radio listening in its sights

Annie Langston

10 Mar 2022

Radio

Podcasts

Audiobooks

The adoption of streaming into our audio experiences has created an industry-disrupting practice that broke away from physical forms of consumption. The hardware we once relied on has been seamlessly replaced...

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Webinar: Games companies’ video opportunity

Karol Severin

3 Mar 2022

webinar

games video

Creators

Traditionally, games companies predominantly used games video for marketing purposes. This made perfect sense in the era of unit sales and early-adoption stages of games-related video. Today, 30% of console...

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The podcast push that mainstream audiences never asked for

Annie Langston

1 Mar 2022

Podcasts

spotify podcasts

Audible

The investment from streaming platforms to bring podcasts to mainstream audiences has reached, quite literally, a stadium-sized push. These platforms are making investments as part of wider strategic objectives...

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Time for a metaverse reality check

Hanna Kahlert

23 Feb 2022

metaverse

NFT

web 3.0

Be it a realistic phenomenon or simply escapism, the digital discourse of 2022 has been populated by a number of shiny new terms that seem to have wooed the digital entertainment world. NFTs. Web 3.0....

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The past, present and future of the creator economy runs through Apple

Kriss Thakrar

11 Feb 2022

Apple

Creator economy

Streaming

In previous posts, we have talked about the possibilities opening up for the next generation of creators . In particular, posts on fluid audio and social studios showed how music has the potential to become...

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